A Houston father who was drunk while giving his 1-year-old son a bath fell asleep and caused his little boy to drown, according to Harris County Sheriff’s deputies.
Enrique Alberto Machado, 36, appeared in probable cause court on Tuesday after he was charged with felony murder – injury to a child in the death of his 13-month-old son Carlos.
The child’s mother, Cynthia Veliz, told a Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy that she found Machado asleep next to the bathtub where the boy was inside floating face up on Saturday at 11 a.m., according to a probable cause court document.
The boy was pronounced dead at Texas Children’s Hospital – West Houston Campus before 12 p.m. Saturday.
Machado, a truck driver, repeatedly told the deputy that he took responsibility for the child’s death. He was in the Houston area on assignment from Colorado and went drinking with co-workers before returning to the house to bathe his son.
Though the final autopsy results are pending on the boy, an examiner at the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science said that the boy died as the result of drowning and was a homicide.
Agencies/Canadajournal